You And I, We're Sort Of Like This
by Kelly123
Summary: Because Jacob Black has never kissed a girl. Collection of blackwater one-shots.
1. kissin'

_Why am i still writing Twilight shiz-nit?_

_Because I am pathetic, plain and simple. Oh, and the fact my love for blackwater cannot be destroyed by my hatred of other Twilight-type things/people (let's bite our lip a little more, shall we?)._

_Anyways! I still need to finish my little Hermione/Ron ficlet thing-y, but I liked writing that sort of "missing moments" stuff so much that I decided to concoct one for Jake/Leah. It's just a collection of one-shots, a few scenarios throughout the years that I think would have been far more interesting to read about than some blond mutant who just happens to age in a way that is particularly convenient for everyone to have a happy ending... Bitter? Nah, just super lame and spending way too much time writing this stuff when I should be doing a thousand more productive things._

_But alas, I digress. This is purely for fun, no infringement intended, and so on and so forth._

_Enjoy!  
_

* * *

"**Jacob Black**, have you ever kissed a girl?"

Jake froze on the spot, one hand literally caught inside the cookie jar…or hidden inside the Clearwater refrigerator. He all but quivered at the sight of the girl before him, she terrified him so immensely. Mentally he cursed himself, using words that would make that big vein in Dad's neck swell up and pop out if he got caught using them. He shouldn't have been here at all, his father had told him five deviled eggs was quite enough… but he had just wanted one more! Now, with his fingers gripping the cursed egg's slippery surface, he regretted his greed with his whole heart. Quickly, frantically, he weighed his options.

The way he saw it, there were two ways to get out of this. He could, A) drop the egg like a hot potato and run…but she would most likely just tell his Dad he had been sneaking seconds (or more like sixths). Girls were like that about tattling, they seemed to really like telling on people and getting them in trouble. Well, at least his sisters did. He figured that getting him in trouble was probably their favorite thing to do, ever.

Or, B) he could stay very, very still and quiet and hope she would get bored and leave him to eat in peace. This had never worked before, but he had watched Jurassic Park last week and from his experience girls were pretty much the same as T-Rex's. Except a whole lot less cool.

While he was formulating his plan, the girl put her hands on her hips and tapped her bare foot against the kitchen's linoleum floor. Neither of his options were looking too good right now, and neither was the deviled egg. This must be God's way of punishing him for disobeying his Dad. He had done something he wasn't supposed to and now the devil had been sent to him in the form of a dinosaur named Leah Clearwater. From the stories Seth told, the two were one and the same.

He swallowed, hard, and glanced from the tray of eggs to Seth's big sister. Mrs. Sue might only make her specialty once a year for the big Superbowl party, but he would rather take back every one he had eaten if it meant he would have avoided having to endure Leah's wrath.

Same as most girls, he tried his best to stay away from her (cooties…ew!), but it didn't always work. Like this one time, when she found Embry and him putting fake dog poop on her window sill, and she went all crazy. She started screaming at them and using a whole bunch of bad words he had never even heard and chased them all the way into the woods behind her house. She even shot him in the butt with Seth's nerf gun while they were running away! It hurt really bad, and she hadn't hit Embry at all. But the worst part of it all was that she hadn't given the poop back, and he had spent a month's allowance on it. It wasn't like she was going to use or anything. He asked Seth to get it back for him, but he was just a baby and couldn't do anything right. Nervously recalling the soreness in his rear that night, Jake glanced down at Leah, but thankfully her hands were empty. He wouldn't put it past her to throw the fruit from the basket on the counter at him though.

"I asked you a question, Jacob, now you better answer me." She was advancing upon him way too quickly, and he let go of the egg. He took a step back, and was just about to make a break for it when something stopped him.

Like literally, stopped him. It's hard to run away from a bossy-pants ten year old when she has just shut your hand in the refrigerator door. Slammed it, really.

"Ouch! Owwwwwwwwwww!" He squealed, jumping from one foot to another while wincing in pain. That was it, there was no doubt in his mind, girls weren't made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Girls were made of dinosaur guts and devil juice. Why in the world anybody would want to kiss one was beyond him.

"You scream like a little girl!" She said with a laugh, letting go of the door and releasing his chilly fingers. He instantly drew the aching digits into his mouth.

"No I don't!" He said indignantly, mumbling a bit with his mouth full. "Girls are gross and smelly and mean and I'm never gonna kiss one. Never, ever, ever."

"Oh really?" Leah replied, quirking a dark eyebrow up. "I wouldn't be too sure of that."

"Well I am. And I don't care what you say, 'cause your just a dumb gi-"

Leah's lips were upon his before he could get the word out of his mouth. In the blink of an eye she had kissed him, their lips touching for the scarcest of heartbeats before she pulled away.

She burst into giggles then, covering her mouth with her hands and laughing hysterically. More laughter joined hers, and these chuckles were nauseatingly familiar ones at that. Shaking himself out of his startled confusion, he looked beyond her to find both of his sisters doubled over in the kitchen doorway.

"Oh my gosh Lee, I can't believe you actually did it!" Rebecca choked out, clutching at her stomach while she wheezed for breath.

"Yeah, you actually kissed a seven year old! Eww!" Rachel joined in, leaning on her sister heavily for support while she barely controlled her joy at her little brother's humiliation.

Leah dashed over to the older girls without a second glance back at the boy over her shoulder, "I know! I mean, super-double eww!I can't believe you guys dared me to, that was soooo gross!"

"Jakey kissed a girl, Jakey kissed a girl! Jake and Leah, sitting in a tree, K-I…"

Linking arms, the three girls ran off singing down the hall. Jake tried to yell an intimidating 'shut up!' after then, but it had little effect except maybe to increase their volume. His lips tasted faintly cheesy, like Doritos, and he swiped at them with the back of his hand. He hadn't eaten nacho Doritos all day, he was strictly a cool ranch kind of guy. Girls couldn't do anything right, not even picking out chips! Furrowing his brow, he turned his attention once more to the fridge before him. Filling both hands with as many eggs as he would hold, Jacob set off on a determined path towards Leah's bedroom. He was going to get that dog poop back.

That day Leah gave him his first kiss, and he gave her the gift that keeps on giving…deviled eggs hidden in her underwear drawer.

* * *

_Short, but that's what I love about one-shots! _

_As always, reviews are a ridiculously addictive happy-maker..._


	2. dancin'

_Yay for writing chapters!_

_Lame, yes... but so are most of the things that make me smile. Don't hate.  
_

_This is purely for fun, no infringement intended, and so on and so forth._

_Enjoy!  
_

* * *

"**Jacob Black**, you have no idea how to dance, do you?"

Jake started and spun around, the remote he held a moment before clattering to the floor. "What? No! I mean, uh- yes…I mean, what?"

"Eloquent, Black, that's what you are."

"Shut up Leah." He muttered under his breath, stooping down to retrieve the remote. He resisted the urge to fling it at her, but barely.

"Make me." She smirked, reaching out and snatching the control out of his hand.

None too gently he yanked the remote back from her, crossing his arms and hiding it under his armpit. He scowled at her sullenly. Of course he had no idea how to dance, but there was no way he was going to tell Leah Clearwater that. He preferred not to tell her anything at all, conversation with that girl was something he tried to avoid at all costs. There are some things a guy just doesn't forgive…and especially doesn't forget. "Didn't you just get your license? Why don't you go drive around or something and leave me alone."

"Having a license doesn't mean I have a car, dimwit. I'm stuck here with your sunshine-y self while our Dads gut those fish they caught with Charlie this morning. Lucky you, I know."

"Yeah, that's just what I was thinking." He said, collapsing onto his couch.

"Soo…" She dropped down onto the faded piece of furniture beside him. "Did you want me to teach you?"

He gave her a sidelong glance. "Teach me what?"

She punched his shoulder, and it hurt a little more than he would care to admit. "You know, how to dance!"

"Wh-why? Why would you think I would need to learn how to dance?" He might be turning a slight shade of red. Maybe.

"Umm, why else would you be standing here alone in front of the television, swaying your bony hips awkwardly to MTV with a very concentrated look on your face? Plus, I know the middle school Valentines dance is next week, doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. Women's intuition and all you know."

He crossed his arms over his chest (again) and avoided eye contact, staring intensely at the people on television still bumping and grinding before them. The ways in which they were contorting their bodies were totally foreign and more than a little intimidating. He was fairly certain girls on the rez wouldn't want to do…the things these girls were doing. Would they? He dropped his chin to his chest awkwardly. "How did you know about the Valentines dance?"

"Embry came over to borrow one of my Dad's ties a few days ago. I may or may not have given him a few pointers on how to woo a certain female into accompanying him…"

This caught his attention. "I knew it! I knew that something had to be up, there is no way Paige Hughes would have agreed to go to the dance with him if he hadn't pulled something over on her. What did you do, sneak him a bottle …I dunno, chloroform or something?"

"Chloroform? Dear God Black, he wants to dance with her, not knock her out and sneak her into the back of his child-molester van. Or at least I hope not. But regardless, wow, you really are hopeless…hence the reason no girl in her right mind will dance with you."

"Hey, girls dance with me." He mumbled.

"Really? Who, and when? I need names."

"Okay, okay, you've made your point, now go away." He grabbed a pillow from behind his back and placed it beside him, trying to block her out of his line of sight. It lasted about two seconds before she reached out and flung it behind the couch.

"What, and leave you stuck here all by your lonesome trying to learn the Macarena from TRL? Now, what kind of a friend would I be if I did that?"

Jacob's face wrinkled in confusion. "Friend? In what twisted universe are we friends?"

"The one where I am bored out of my mind. Humor me, it's for your own good." Jumping up, she grabbed his hand and hauled the thirteen year old to his (two left) feet. She snatched away the remote and flung it over the back of the couch. "Okay, you're going to see a lot of the other little thirteen year old misfits doing the whole 'hands around the neck, hands on the waist, swaying back and forth' kind of jazz, but that's stupid and you will not be doing any such thing. Understand?"

Jake only stared at her through narrowed eyes, his jaw clenched tightly. He would never, ever admit it of course, but there was still a part of him that was absolutely terrified of Leah Clearwater. And it wasn't exactly a small part either. Oh, she had gotten a lot more tolerable since she started dating Sam Uley, Seth and him figured all that sappy stuff, happiness and love and the like must be eating away at her usual sinister persona. But still, even now a guy would have to be an absolute fool to trust her. Jake wondered if she had used some of that chloroform (she had to have it) on Sam. There was no way he was going to let her make a fool of him, and he stayed right where he was.

"Oooookay, so I guess we are going to be doing things the hard way. Give me your hands."

Still, he didn't move. She rolled her eyes.

"Jacob, come on don't be stupid. Now I know that might be difficult for you, but just try would you? I don't have cooties for Pete's sake, I thought being a teenager now you wouldn't be so afraid of girls anymore. I mean, we've kissed before, what's a little dancing after that?"

His eyes grew wide and he looked around the empty room nervously. If anyone besides his sisters ever got an earful of that story he would be totally in for it. He couldn't imagine the crap the guys would give him for kissing a girl like Leah…or really, any girl for that matter. "Shh, don't talk about that would you? Somebody might hear you!"

Gasping, Leah clutched her chest. "What was I thinking?! God forbid anyone hear about our torrid affair! I mean, what would the neighbors think?"

"Ha, ha, ha. So funny I forgot to laugh."

"Oh grow up Jake! If you think that little peck was an actual kiss, then I feel infinitely sorry for whatever girl you actually try to lay one on. But come on, if you let me teach you a few moves, you might actually get a chance at a real smooch on a girl you don't completely despise."

"No."

"Ja-cob Black!

"Le-ah Clearwater!" He mocked her, hands on his hips and everything.

"I swear, you're still such a girl! Give me your damn hands would you!" Reaching out, she grabbed him by the wrists with both of her hands and pulled him roughly towards her. Probably bit too roughly though, on second thought. They collided with a thud, and she stumbled back under the weight of him. Reaching out to steady herself, she grabbed two fistfuls of his tee-shirt and held on for dear life. He was teetering from the impact too though, and his added weight and unstability only sent her crashing backwards onto the couch- with Jake landing fully on top of her. Despite the fact that she was almost three years older than him, he was still a good bit bigger and his body covered hers almost entirely. He may or not have stopped breathing for a moment or two. Shut up.

"Leah, Sam's here to pick you up!" Harry voice echoed back from the front of the house.

"Get off of me you idiot!" She wheezed, shoving at his shoulders and squirming underneath him uncomfortably.

All that squirming wasn't helping the situation, not one bit.

"Umm…okay." He mumbled, his face as hot and bright as a cherry-red coal. He jumped up off of the older girl and ran back to his room as fast as he could, with Leah making a frantic break for the cab of her boyfriend's new truck.

She never tried to dance with him again.

That day, Jacob gave Leah a bruised ribcage, and she gave him…well, it wouldn't be quite appropriate to discuss that sort of thing here.

* * *

_I like writing a happy Leah...I hope she didn't seem OOC!_

_PS, new kitty needs a name, any suggestions that aren't common or people names?  
_


	3. drinkin'

_Numba Threeeeeeeeee!_

_I know the previous entries have been pretty silly, but this one right here gets a bit more serious. Not too serious, of course, but just a smidge. I hope you guys don't mind...If you do, then feel free to scream at me over on that reviews page. But don't worry, I'm going somewhere with this. I think...kind of?_

_Oh brother, who knows..._

_This is purely for fun, no infrigement intended, and so on and so forth._

_Enjoy!  
_

* * *

"**Jacob Black**, you're all kinds of ga-ga for that vamp girl aren't you?"

If he drove the tire-jack straight into her heart, he didn't think anyone would fault him for it. As a matter of fact, they might even give him some sort of award for being a La Push hero, with a metal and everything. It was kinda like community service if you thought about it, like he was cleaning up the rez or something like that. He tapped the heavy piece of metal against his palm, his recently aged face furrowed with contemplation. Sam would put on a nice little show of disapproval at least for Emily's sake, but that was just because he still felt all guilty about the whole 'dumping his long-time girlfriend to hook up with her cousin' thing (honestly though, as much as Jake detested the theory of imprinting, he definitely agreed with his alpha's choice between the two girls). Pretty much there was no contest though, and given a minute the happy couple would probably forget whatshername ever existed. But beside that, Sue might get a little down in the dumps… surely though she would soon realize how much better off she was without such a burdensome daughter. Yes, the temptation to send her sleeping with the fishes was sounding better and better all the while.

"JACOB BLACK!"

It probably wouldn't do any good though. After all, Leah was the only female werewolf known in the history of creation, and so therefore obviously her very existence was an abomination to God. With his luck her cursed body would probably swallow up the tool and shoot it back out through her mouth at the speed of light or something. And it would probably end up lodged in his eyeball or something equally unpleasant. He wondered how quickly his own cursed flesh would recover from a tire-jack to the eye.

"JAAAAAAAAA-"

"Oh for Pete's sake woman, I hear you!" He finally exclaimed, cutting off her piercing screech and throwing his possible weapon to the floor. As best he might have tried, he simply couldn't block the unmistakable voice of Leah Clearwater from his poor defenseless ears. At the moment that loud, blunt, and (if he wasn't mistaken) slurred voice was infecting the quiet sanctuary of his garage from cement floor to wooden rafters. He would almost rather share the space with a bloodsucker.

Almost.

"Well, if you heard me, why didn't you answer, butt-munch?" She inquired, tipping back her route 44 Sonic cup to take a long, audible gulp. He had a sneaking suspicion there wasn't just cherry limeade in there.

"Because I'm busy." He gestured to the tire at his feet. The one he had been trying to put on the rabbit before he had been so rudely interrupted. "So leave me alone. Now."

"No." She said matter-o-factly, her expression thoroughly blasé.

"Yes. No girls in the garage, it's my Dad's rules." He lied, though even if there was such a rule he didn't truly consider Leah an actual 'girl'.

"No girls, eh? What about your little vamp girl? Is sheeee allowed in your precious garage?"

She was gnawing on her bright red straw like a beaver or something. He wanted her to choke on that straw. He wanted to help her choke on it, actually. "Go away Leah."

"And where do you suggest I go? Hmm?"

"Anywhere that isn't here. And I'm not going to feel sorry for you Clearwater, so you can just stop trying now." He said, turning his attention back to the car.

She plopped down next to him, uninvited. "Not asking you to."

"Sure…" He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "God, you reek! What did you do, bathe in gin?"

"I'm certain I have no idea what you are talking about." She brought her Styrofoam cup to her mouth and gulped. "You wanna sip?"

"Think not."

"Suit yourself. For your information, it happens to be absolutely disgusting. So back to the subject, you're like totally sweating the vam-"

His knuckles blanched around the handle of the wrench. "Stop calling her that! "

"Oh touchy!" Lift cup. Suck straw. Swallow. Grimace. "Okay, okay, _Isabella_. Is that better?"

"How is this any of your business again?"

"Pack business is everyone's business baby. Every nitty gritty detail of your personal life is up for public scrutiny, duh. And you, mister, are not doing too well in the polls at the moment."

"And you are?" He yanked the old tire off the frame without keeping his superhuman strength entirely in check. Quil probably wouldn't be able to use it as a tire swing for Claire now. Oops.

"Course not. That's why I'm here to help you out." She belched, loudly. Paul probably would have given her a high-five, even he was minorly impressed for half a moment.

Jake shoved the ruined tire out of his way. "That doesn't even make sense."

"Yes it does…does it have to? Hey, where does Billy hide the beer?"

"That's it." He stood to his feet. "I'm calling Seth and we're getting your wasted butt out of here. Time to hit the road Clearwater."

"No!" She jumped up too, dropping her (now empty) cup on the ground. "I'm here to give you some wolf-sisterly advice!"

"Pretty sure I could do without any pearls of wisdom from you."

"No you can't!"

"Yeah, yeah, stay away from the cold ones, she's no good, I need to wait for my imprint, blah, blah, blah."

"Go for it.

"You know, you guys don't even know her, she's- wait, what did you say?"

"I said go for it, go for her."

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the car. "Huh?"

"If she makes you happy, if you think you love her…then go for it." She thumped him on the forehead with her thumb and middle finger. He was too stunned to react.

"But…she runs with vampires?"

"And she also runs with werewolves, at least a part of the time. The girl is obviously a little off in the head, but any chick would have to be to spend an extended amount of time with you. Regardless, if she makes you happy, if you get that knot in your stomach when you see her and you can't stop yourself from smiling when you hear her ringtone, that's something. You shouldn't have to abandon that good feeling just because some over-muscled, ego-tripping alpha spins you his spoon-fed load about traditions and legends and fate and onceuponatime's. What I'm saying is, love is…well, it's worth it. Real love I mean, not that stupid mindless imprint crap that is sucking out the souls of the rest of our pack."

Jake cocked an eyebrow. "Sounds a little bitter to me."

"Of course I'm bitter Jacob." She met his gaze head-on, and he felt a little uneasy under the intense fire burning in her dark eyes. "This thing, this curse, it's taken my entire life away from me, so of course I'm bitter and of course I hate it! I hate what it's done to our community and I hate what it's doing to us. It already controls the others, mind, body and soul, and it makes me want to claw my eyeballs out. They are just so accepting, so nonchalant in giving up their lives, I just…God! But you, you seem like you might have a chance at beating it."

"Beating it?"

"Breaking it! Not succumbing to turning your life over to be determined by stupid fables! So do it Jake, love her."

"Okay…" He muttered, feeling extremely uncomfortable about both the intimacy of her words and the raw sincerity Leah was emoting. Standing there with her fists clenched into balls at her sides, she looked as though she could burst at any moment, just break into a million flaming pieces and let the winds carry the cinders that she once was far away from here. He felt kinda bad about his earlier desire to murder her. "Umm, thanks…I guess."

"Yeah…" She kicked her empty cup with the toe of her flip-flop and watched it roll across the cement and bump against the wheel of his car.

He looked at her tentatively. "Hey, you know how to change a tire?"

That day Jacob gave Leah a useful lesson in auto mechanics, and she gave him a sneaking suspicion that she may actually have a functional heart beating somewhere inside of her after all.

* * *

_Drunk Leah isn't as fun as happy Leah, but what can ya do?_

_And Kitty's name is...review to find out!  
_


	4. leavin'

_Theeeeeeeeeee Endddddddddddddd._

_Almost. _

_Just this last little ditty to go. Writing this was super, super hard to get out of my head and onto paper...and I'm still not happy with how everything came together. It seems a little choppy to me, but I think it's supposed to be like that? Ugh, I dunno, I just had this vision of how I wanted everything to play out and it was harder than I expected to bring that to life. I can feel what I want Leah to feel, but translating that is difficult. Just like the girl herself!  
_

_Anyway, it's been fun to play along with my two favorite characters through the ages, and so I hope it's been fun for you guys to follow along._

_This is purely for fun, no infringement intended, and so on and so forth._

_Enjoy!

* * *

  
_

"**Jacob Black**, you really are an idiot, you know that don't you?"

She almost laughed. A bitter, mocking laugh. A Leah laugh. She almost did, but she didn't. She just rolled her eyes at him, at all of this really, took a deep breath and continued.

"Completely and utterly stupid. Naïve is a good word also. You might look like a twenty-five year old, but those ridiculous wolf-gene muscles can only get you so far. You still have the brain capacity of a teenager, a fact which rears it's ugly head more often than not. Like now, for instance, like this whole mess. It's when you go and do stuff like this, completely and utterly stupid stuff, that I am reminded of the fact that you are only eighteen. I mean geez, you are barely out of High School! A stinkin' baby!"

A bratty little toddler who told his father he didn't want to play with her He tattled on her, told Dad and Mr. Billy that she wouldn't share her things and called him mean names. Her dad said she should know better because she was older, and he made her go sit in the corner while the little jerk slobbed all over her stuff.

Still, she should know better, she was older. Is older.

"You aren't back at LPH anymore, this is real life, with real consequences. If you mess up here you don't just get a detention with smelly old Mrs. Hornbiller, and if you really screw up you don't have Sam to come clean up after you either. I mean, this whole 'separating-from-the-pack-and-becoming-your-own-alpha' thing? Wow, spur of the moment much? And all over some chick, too. A chick who, by the way, was not only already married but knocked up too and therefore totally unavailable! That was completely unreasonable and irresponsible, Jacob, do you ever think before you act, or more accurately, before you react? Geez, even Quil wouldn't have been dumb enough to make the mistakes you've made…and keep on making!"

All that time spent in time out hadn't done the trick. She would have been better off socking Jake in the gut with the light-saber she got for Christmas that one year…or technically Seth got but whatever, 'cause he was totally a baby and didn't even know what it was for. He didn't even miss it when she took it out of his toybox. So there.

Anyway, she should have just hit him more often. He should have just been afraid of her.

"Mistakes, granted, have been made by all here. This whole…calamity has been one continuous mistake right after another. I made a mistake in joining your little pack in the first place, and you made one in making me your beta. I'm not a good person Jacob, anyone who spends five minutes with me will tell you that. Why the hell would you put someone like me in such a position? Oh yeah, because you're…well, you get the point."

She had wanted to kill him once that smell started up. It was weeks after the super bowl, and she originally attributed the stench to the adjoining bathroom she shared with her little brother. Then came the day…even now, she could still remember the feel of that rotting egg smeared all over her hand as she reached blindly into her drawer. She had never been a squeamish girl, still wasn't now (she might not be fond of raw deer, but she still ate it if she had to,) but that was enough to turn even her stomach. She hadn't eaten a deviled egg since then, and she loved her mother's deviled eggs.

How dare he take that away from her!

"How dare you? How dare you be so selfish, you never gave any thought to what your actions would mean for the rest of the pack. You never thought about what it would do to us except for where it would benefit you."

(She didn't believe that, but it wouldn't be better, easier for them both if he thought she did.)

"It's time for you to grow up…figuratively, of course. Literally we both know that's not possible right now, but don't try to distract me."

She wasn't that much of a dancer herself, she couldn't have taught him much even if he had cooperated. She was only trying to be a half decent person for once. Sam had told her that she should be nicer to the younger kids on the rez, something about being a "good example" and all. Yeah right. Her good deed backfiring so brilliantly should have been warning enough to never listen to anything Mr. Uley ever told her. Never, ever, ever.

"How…how could you say those things? It's all lies, we both know that. You might think lying to me would make things easier, but really, you've just gone and made everything worse. Or maybe not lying, not intentionally at least, I'll give you that. But definitely wistful thinking at least. Wistful, adolescent thinking, of things that simply can't be. "

She had meant everything she said about giving love a shot. But that had been a long time ago, and looking back she saw how naïve she had been…at least as naïve as Leah Clearwater could be. Now she knew better, knew what an idiot she had been, a complete and utter idiot (truly, she was perfect for his pack, when you thought about it that way, a couple of spurned idiots running around together). What a difference a few years and vampires and crushed hopes and dreams could have on a girl.

No, not a girl, not anymore, not for a long time. Biologically, yes she was still young (even if her mutated body hadn't changed one bit in so many years), but she felt every one of those moments in her very being as though they had been multiplied by the thousands. It was like a punishment of sorts, the way time weighed on her, like it was making up for not taking their toll on her physically. She felt so old and worn, too old for wistful thinking and too old not to know the truth. To know that love- real, true, un-imprinted love… that wasn't an option for a werewolf.

"You don't love me. You tolerate me, sure, and you even like me sometimes, but love? No Jake, you don't even know what that means. So why would you tell me that, why would you even pretend that you could feel that for me? You can't, it's just…not a possibility, not for you, not for us."

He wasn't an idiot, not at all. He wasn't naïve either, not really anyway. He was kind and sweet and brave and honorable and gorgeous and completely and utterly too good for her.

But he wasn't hers. He never had been and he never could be. They had both been avoiding the inevitable, dancing around the subject with stolen kisses and touches and glances and quiet words in the dark when it was just the two of them. Things that made that weight on her shoulders take flight, leaving her feeling more like a normal person than she had in a long, long time. Even if it only lasted until that little demon half-breed came skipping back into his world.

Or at least that was how things used to be, until he went and opened his stupid, ignorant mouth that is.

"Because there isn't an us! I'm your beta, you're my alpha, and that's all we can be! You have an imprint, Jacob, and it isn't me. It can never be me, you can never love me. You and I… we had fun together, but that's all it was. I thought you knew that we were only killing time until Ren-(she choked on the word, every sentence leaving an awful taste in her mouth) until _she_ grew up. But you obviously didn't. You had to go and ruin it when you said that. Nothing can be the same now Jacob, nothing."

And it couldn't, she wouldn't let it. She couldn't do that to him, couldn't let him think he loved her. Couldn't take that chance that he actually might.

She should have never let him kiss her in the woods that night, never let things get this far. She was cursed, but even moreso than the guys. Leah was like arsenic is female form, everything, everyone she touched she poisoned. She would ruin Jacob, screw him up more royally than being a werewolf already had. And she loved him too much to let that happen.

But she couldn't say that. Wouldn't say that. She would just…

She didn't cry. Leah Clearwater never cried, it simply wasn't physically possible. Except for when Sam left her. Except for when her Dad died. Except for now. Because now, for some reason unbeknownst to all reasonable intellect and known science, she was sobbing. And she didn't try to stop it either, didn't wipe her eyes or blow her nose or hold her face in her shaking hands. She just cried, letting her tears soak through the paper until they blurred the ink and obscured her words into a sopping mess.

It didn't matter though, not really. She never really planned on giving him that letter anyway.

So she folded the smeared note back into its neat little square, smoothing the worn creases carefully before she tucked it back inside the front pocket of her carry-on. Maybe people in the airport were staring at her, but she didn't lift her head to look at them. They were boarding her flight now, any minute they would call her group and she would get on that plane and never come back. It was the least she could do.

That day she gave him her everything, but she wasn't going to let him waste his on her.

* * *

_Okay now for srs..._

_THE END!!!_

_PS: LPH stands for LA Push High, I made it up...I think.  
_


	5. findin'

_Okay, I honestly have no idea where this came from._

_I was finished with this story, totally content to end it on a sad note, a little bit of a cliffy even! But then...I started writing. So writing and writing and hey, this sorta fits in with that BW I should be done with, doesn't it? And of course I couldn't just let it go, could I? I did a little editing to make it flow better with the other chapters, but it still sticks out a little (sorry 'bout that). But here it is, and though I have no idea where I'm going with this, I hope you all don't mind._

_This is purely for fun, no infringement intended, and so on and so forth._

_Enjoy!_

* * *

"**Leah Clearwater**, you certainly have made a life for yourself here, haven't you?"

The world stopped turning.

She felt it with her entire being, and the abrupt standstill almost knocked her to her knees. No. No, no, no…

Standing frozen outside the door to her apartment, her hand started to shake as it held her key poised at the doorknob. No one had called her that in years. She had taken so many precautions, gone to such measures to make sure that name died along with the angry young woman who it had belonged to when she left them both in Washington. She had worked her hardest to forget her, but now she was back, carried on the lips of an all too familiar voice.

"I hope you don't think me too forward, but I would appreciate it if you were so kind as to invite me in."

She didn't realize she had been holding her breath until she found herself gasping for oxygen, dizzy with an intense dread at his words, his very presence. Her keys were deafening as they fell from her grasp, gnashing against one another as they handed in a heap at her feet on the worn concrete walkway. The world was still not moving, and she felt gravity pulling her down. Placing both hands flat against her door, she held on for dear life as her legs began to buckle.

This couldn't be happening.

"Leah…" he murmured, swooping in and snatching up her keychain in the blink of an eye. "I know this may come as a shock, but it really would be for the best if this could exchange could take place out of range of prying eyes.

He placed a hand on her shoulder and she shuttered, but nodded. He was right. Taking her keys back, she found the appropriate one and fit it into the lock, twisting it slowly as the latch sprang free. She turned the knob and he pushed it open, but stayed where she was standing until a gentle nudge from him encouraged her to step over the threshold. They entered, and he silently shut the door behind them and locked it once more.

"Well…this is a very nice place you have here." He announced, breaking the silence with awkward formality as he looked around at the clean but chaotic space surrounding them.

She looked at him, meeting his eyes for the first time, and replied with more than a hint of bitterness. "You should know, you paid for it Dr. Cullen."

He chuckled a bit. It made her shiver. "Touché. But I only wrote the check, Esme picked it out. She is much better at this sort of thing than I am."

She should smile and be grateful, she should offer him a seat and ask him how he's been, she should do something, anything befitting of a proper hostess, but she simply couldn't bring herself to it. He facilitated all of this, and here she was, resenting his trespass with emotions she never let see the light of day. She felt the tears welling and she cursed them with everything left in her, but it did nothing to stop their formation. She didn't trust herself to speak, but she had to get it out there. "You…but that's…you didn't come halfway across the country to admire your investment though, did you?"

His pale face was grave. "I'm sorry Leah-"

"Kate!" She screamed, flinging her heavily-laden bag off of her arm and hurling it against the wall in one fluid, furious motion. "My name is Kate now!"

His eyes followed the canvas tote's path, and he seemed torn between comforting her and going to retrieve it. The bag would be easier to fix, to simply pick back up and put to rights, but the girl was another story. In the end, he chose neither, and they continued to stand at arm's distance from one another in the living area of her tiny Charleston apartment. He sighed deeply. "Of course, of course. I'm sorry, I should have known that. Alice was the one who…the documentation…anyway, I apologize. Kate."

"Can we please just get this over with?"

"Of course. We had an agreement when we got you settled here, and I think we both know what me being here entails. I would never come here and disturb you if it were not of the utmost importance. I know how badly you want to separate yourself from Forks and everything that happened to you there, but-"

"Seth?" She cut him off, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. He promised, it would be as though she never existed. Her medical records completely wiped, her birth certificate destroyed, and after they got her settled, no communication with any of the Cullens. They would keep their mouths shut and she would do the same. Unless…of course there was an unless. Unless there was an emergency. She knew that was why he was here, and she felt physically ill with what she feared he might say.

"Your mother."

She collapsed. Her already shaking legs completely gave out from underneath her and she buckled, her entire body hit the carpeted floor hard. She lay her clammy cheek against the old gray shag and tried to breathe. It was a conscious effort, inhale exhale and repeat, her lungs burning with every attempt. Dr. Cullen dropped to his knees beside her, and she felt his cold fingers press against her neck and check her pulse. She wanted to flinch, to pull away from him and lock herself in her room until she woke up in bed from this terrible nightmare.

Because it had to be some sort of sick, warped dream. This couldn't be real, Dr. Carlisle Cullen could not be inside Kate Harold's apartment, telling her that Sue Clearwater was…she didn't want to think about how that sentence might end. Because she shouldn't have to, not here, not in this life, not in the one where they had nothing to do with each other. She had to wake up, to get out of this horrible place…but she couldn't.

Physically, she could not bring herself to exert the effort to do anything other than breathe, even just to cry. One breathe after another, in…out…wake up, wake up, wake up!

Once he had checked her vitals and must have felt assured that she wasn't about to go into a coma, Dr. Cullen began to speak. His voice though, usually so low and steady and even reassuring (once she got used to it), sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away and underwater. His words were distant and garbled, but she knew they were important, so she struggled to understand.

"Le-Kate. I'm so sorry this ever had to happen, especially under these circumstances. I've debated for months about whether to find you or not, with the hopes that in the meantime her health would improve…but her symptoms have only worsened. I hate having to disrupt your life here, I truly do respect the new start you've made and cannot imagine how hard it's been on you. I know dragging all this bad blood back up again is going to be painful, but I think we would both regret it even more if I never told you, no matter what you choose to do with the information."

She knew that. She might hate it and have tried to block it from her memory with all she had, but she knew that deep down in whatever substituted for a vampire's heart, Dr. Cullen was a good 'person.' She knew he was trying to help, but she only wished he didn't have to. She wished again to wake up, and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. Counting to ten, she opened them slowly…only to find the scene before her unchanged. A man with expensive clothes and golden eyes still knelt on the floor of her living room. It might have been comical, the outlandishness of it all, had it been anyone other than the two of them. But it couldn't be, and she swallowed the thick knot in her throat and tried to speak, finding her voice unable to rise any louder than a whisper.

"What…what happened to her?"

"She had a stroke." He paused a moment to let the words sink in. She gasped, and when she resumed breathing it was quite labored. Her already racing pulse accelerated, so he proceeded with caution, choosing his words carefully. "It was…serious of course, but given her age and health history, such things are not unheard of. Given proper treatment, I wouldn't have expected it to be life-threatening."

She interrupted him, "So you're saying it's not… life-threatening I mean."

It wasn't, it shouldn't have been. I expected her to make a full recovery, but she hasn't been making the kind of progress I would like to see in someone with her condition."

She lifted her head slightly. "Her condition?"

He seemed to regret his words. "Your mother…she hasn't been the same since you left. You could call it depression, but that is a fairly broad term and she has never allowed me to properly evaluate her. All of the changes in the last years, losing Harry, and then you…it's been a bit too much for her. Obviously, bed rest is needed after one has a stroke, but I would have like to have seen her up and moving around some time ago. She refuses all of her rehabilitation treatments; speech, physical therapy and the like, and stays in bed day after day. Seth, Charlie, Emily, no one can change her mind, no matter what they try to do to coax her out. Her recovery is suffering greatly from it, and I believe she had begun to have small seizures, though she-"

"Stop it!" She sat bolt upright, covering both her ears with her hands like a child. "Shut up, I don't want to hear anymore! I can't, don't you understand?"

"Kate…"

"I get it, okay! It's all my fault! I killed my father, and now I'm killing my mother…I get it…I ruin people. Don't you think I know that? Don't you think that's why I left?"

And he wanted to hold her. He really did, because despite her tall frame, she looks just like a little girl curled up on the carpet there. A daughter unlike any of his adopted children, one in desperate need of a father to take her into his arms and tell her that everything will be alright and she is safe and nothing bad is going to happen to her ever again.

But he doesn't, because they would both know he is lying.

And she's been lied to enough.

"I'll go." She whispered, dropping her hands from her head to wrap her arms around herself. She stared blindly at the carpet, and he could see her jaw tremble when she spoke. "But at night, and only to see her."

The words have an unspoken meaning which hangs heavily in the air between the two of them, and he nodded his head silently in agreement.

No one else can know she's there.

He can never find out.

That day, Kate gave Leah permission to break a promise, and Jacob...well, he wasn't given a choice.

* * *

_Leah and Carlisle...weird to write, but I kinda love it._

_You?  
_


End file.
